Jumat, Januari 14, 2011

Batman by Danny Elfman is one of his finest scores, one of the most well regarded superhero scores and the breakthrough effort that put him well and truly on the map. Therefore, if you don't own it already, shame on you.

I guess if you're equipped with the original album and aren't a die hard Elfman fan, it's not an essential expansion given the rather limited amount of truly unreleased material, but for everyone else, yeah, go buy it. Great stuff.

Let’s face it: 2010 was a lousy year at the movies. Aside from a few gems, Hollywood seemingly left creative storytelling and original ideas at the door for lots of stupid in glorious 3-D.

New film music didn’t fare much better, which made it especially hard to do our annual year end best-of episode. So we cheated. Instead of a top ten list, we decided to open up the conversation and let the chips fall where they may. That means we discuss not only some of our favorite new releases of the year, but also the mountain of expanded editions and older scores released for the first time on the boutique labels.

Joining us for this episode (and hopefully more in the future) is special guest Mike Joffe, a producer at BSX Records and a respected member of the soundtrack community. Mike really adds some great insights that you’ll not want to miss.

Last week came news that the musical scores for "True Grit," "Black Swan," "The Kids Are All Right" and "The Fighter" had been ruled ineligible by the Academy's music branch, either for using too much pre-existing music or for relying too heavily on songs.

Now that Academy voters have received the list of scores that did qualify, we can add "Toy Story 3" to the list of high-profile scores that aren't in the running – not because the branch ruled it ineligible, but because composer Randy Newman opted not to submit it.

Notable composers whose work isn't on the Oscar list: Harry Gregson-Williams for "Unstoppable," Desplat for "Tamara Drewe" and Dario Marianelli for "Agora."